The 40 most popular 1990s war movies, ranked. Click any film for ratings, reviews, trailers, and where to watch.


Schindler's List
1993 · 3h 15m · US
The true story of how businessman Oskar Schindler saved over a thousand Jewish lives from the Nazis while they worked as slaves in his factory during World War II.


Saving Private Ryan
1998 · 2h 49m · US
As U.S. troops storm the beaches of Normandy, three brothers lie dead on the battlefield, with a fourth trapped behind enemy lines. Ranger captain John Miller and seven men are tasked with penetrating German-held territory and bringing the boy home.


Braveheart
1995 · 2h 58m · US
Enraged at the slaughter of Murron, his new bride and childhood love, Scottish warrior William Wallace slays a platoon of the local English lord's soldiers. This leads the village to revolt and, eventually, the entire country to rise up against English rule.


Hot Shots!
1991 · 1h 25m · US
The gang that created Airplane! and The Naked Gun sets its sights on Top Gun in this spoof. Topper Harley is a talented but unstable fighter pilot with an axe to grind: clearing the family name. His mission is to avenge his father and save a mission sabotaged by greedy weapons manufacturers. He also gets involved in a relationship with Ramada Thompson, a woman with an unusually talented stomach. Hot Shots! makes fun of a variety of other films, from Dances with Wolves to The Fabulous Baker Boys.


The Last of the Mohicans
1992 · 1h 52m · US
In war-torn colonial America, in the midst of a bloody battle between British, the French and Native American allies, the aristocratic daughter of a British Colonel and her party are captured by a group of Huron warriors. Fortunately, a group of three Mohican trappers comes to their rescue.


Legends of the Fall
1994 · 2h 13m · US
In early 20th-century Montana, Col. William Ludlow lives on a ranch in the wilderness with his sons, Alfred, Tristan, and Samuel. Eventually, the unconventional but close-knit family are bound by loyalty, tested by war, and torn apart by love, as told over the course of several decades in this epic saga.


The Thin Red Line
1998 · 2h 51m · US
The story of a group of men, an Army Rifle company called C-for-Charlie, who change, suffer, and ultimately make essential discoveries about themselves during the fierce World War II battle of Guadalcanal. It follows their journey, from the surprise of an unopposed landing, through the bloody and exhausting battles that follow, to the ultimate departure of those who survived.


The English Patient
1996 · 2h 42m · UK
In the 1930s, Count Almásy is a Hungarian map maker employed by the Royal Geographical Society to chart the vast expanses of the Sahara Desert along with several other prominent explorers. As World War II unfolds, Almásy enters into a world of love, betrayal, and politics.


Hot Shots! Part Deux
1993 · 1h 28m · US
Topper Harley is found to be working as an odd-job-man in a monastery. The CIA want him to lead a rescue mission into Iraq, to rescue the last rescue team, who went in to rescue the last rescue team—who went in to rescue hostages left behind after Desert Storm.


The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc
1999 · 2h 38m · FR
In 1429, a French teenager stood before her King with a message she claimed came from God; that she would defeat the world's greatest army and liberate her country from its political and religious turmoil. As she reclaims God's diminished kingdom, this courageous young woman has various amazing victories until her violent and untimely death.


Oedipus Mayor
1996 · 1h 40m · CO
Edipo, is appointed mayor of a town plunged in misery and violence. His first mission is to discover and punish the murderers of Layo, a well-known potentate of the region. His investigation is directed towards all the armed factions that exist in Colombia.


To Live
1994 · 2h 13m · CN
Married couple Fugui and Jiazhen endure tumultuous events in mid-20th century mainland China as their personal fortunes move from wealthy landownership to peasantry.


Ulysses' Gaze
1995 · 2h 56m · GR
An exiled filmmaker finally returns to his home country where former mysteries and afflictions of his early life come back to haunt him once more.


Shining Through
1992 · 2h 12m · UK
Spirited New Yorker Linda Voss goes to work for international lawyer and secret Office of Strategic Services operative Ed Leland just before World War II. As they fall in love, the United States enters the fight against Hitler, and Linda volunteers to work for Ed spying undercover behind Nazi lines. Assigned to uncover information about a German bomb, Linda also has personal motives to fulfill: discovering the fate of her Jewish family members in Berlin.


Three Kings
1999 · 1h 54m · US
A group of American soldiers stationed in Iraq at the end of the Gulf War find a map they believe will take them to a huge cache of stolen Kuwaiti gold hidden near their base, and they embark on a secret mission that's destined to change everything.


Courage Under Fire
1996 · 1h 56m · US
A US Army officer, who made a "friendly fire" mistake that was covered up, has been reassigned to a desk job. He is tasked to investigate a female chopper commander's worthiness to be awarded the Medal of Honor. At first all seems in order. But then he begins to notice inconsistencies between the testimonies of the witnesses...


Bullet in the Head
1990 · 2h 16m · HK
Three childhood friends from the slums of Hong Kong flee to war-time Saigon after accidentally murdering a gang leader, but their troubles only escalate.


Underground
1995 · 2h 50m
Black marketeers Marko and Blacky manufacture and sell weapons to the Communist resistance in WWII Belgrade, living the good life along the way. Marko's surreal duplicity propels him up the ranks of the Communist Party, and he eventually abandons Blacky and steals his girlfriend. After a lengthy stay in a below-ground shelter, the couple reemerges during the Yugoslav Civil War of the 1990s as Marko sees the opportunity to exploit the situation.


Fatherland
1994 · 1h 46m · US
Fictional account of what might have happened if Hitler had won the war. It is now the 1960s and Germany's war crimes have so far been kept a secret. Hitler wants to talk peace with the US president. An American journalist and a German homicide cop stumble into a plot to destroy all evidence of the genocide.


Gettysburg
1993 · 4h 14m · US
In the summer of 1863, General Robert E. Lee leads the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia into Gettysburg, Pennsylvania with the goal of marching through to Washington, D.C. The Union Army of the Potomac, under the command of General George G. Meade, forms a defensive position to confront the rebel forces in what will prove to be the decisive battle of the American Civil War.


I, A Russian Soldier
1995 · RU
No overview available


Stalingrad
1993 · 2h 14m · DE
A German Platoon is explored through the brutal fighting of the Battle of Stalingrad. After half of their number is wiped out and they're placed under the command of a sadistic captain, the platoon lieutenant leads his men to desert. The platoon members attempt escape from the city, now surrounded by the Soviet Army.


Le Pantalon
1997 · 1h 30m · FR
Lucien is a young soldier in the French army during the First World War. Recently married and with a young daughter, his only aim is to get through the war unscathed and get back to his wife and daughter. But this world is turned upside down by a pair of trousers.


El cazador
1991
No overview available


Sahara
1995 · 1h 46m · AU
After the fall of Tobruk in June 1942, U.S. Army sergeant Joe Gunn leads his tank into the Sahara desert, in order to evade advancing Rommel's forces and reach Allied lines. Along the way he picks up few Allied soldiers, but soon they are running out of water. They find water at the ancient well, but the well is a goal of an entire German battalion. Despite the impossible odds, Sergeant Gunn decides to defend the well.


Rob Roy
1995 · 2h 19m · UK
In the highlands of Scotland in the 1700s, Rob Roy tries to lead his small town to a better future, by borrowing money from the local nobility to buy cattle to herd to market. When the money is stolen, Rob is forced into a Robin Hood lifestyle to defend his family and honour.


Ride with the Devil
1999 · 2h 18m · US
Friends Jake and Jack Bull join up with Civil War guerrilla fighters, yet after the realities of war set in, they must decide what honor truly means.


Screamers
1995 · 1h 48m · CA
SIRIUS 6B, Year 2078. On a distant mining planet ravaged by a decade of war, scientists have created the perfect weapon: a blade-wielding, self-replicating race of killing devices known as Screamers designed for one purpose only -- to hunt down and destroy all enemy life forms.


Memphis Belle
1990 · 1h 47m · JP
The "Memphis Belle" is a World War II bomber, piloted by a young crew on dangerous bombing raids into Europe. The crew only have to make one more bombing raid before they have finished their duty and can go home. In the briefing before their last flight, the crew discover that the target for the day is Bremen.


Sunshine
1999 · 3h 1m · AT
The fate of a Hungarian Jewish family throughout the 20th century.


Legionnaire
1998 · 1h 38m · US
Alain Lefevre is a boxer paid by a Marseille mobster to take a dive. When he wins the fight he attempts to flee to America with the mobster's girlfriend Katrina. This plan fails and he seeks escape by joining the foreign legion. As part of the legion he tangles with abusive lieutenant Steinkampf and bonds with legionnaires Luther, Mackintosh and Rosetti.
The Sentence
The Sentence
1997 · 15m
A beat-up camper approaches a snow-covered mountain military check point. A pale sun is rising as a prelude to a chilly morning. The passengers are two old people who are trying to avoid the national draft of their grandson. They hide the kid in a coffin, pretending he's dead. But the commander discovers the young deserter.


Mambí
1998 · CU
At the end of the 19th century, Goyo, a young laborer from the Canary Islands, is forced to enlist in the Spanish army to fight the Cuban independence revolt. During the war, Goyo will share hardships with his comrades Galleguito and Sevillano, and fall in love with a young Cuban woman...


Map of the Human Heart
1993 · 1h 49m · AU
In an Arctic village in 1931, British mapmaker Walter Russell selects 12-year-old Eskimo Avik as his guide. When the boy contracts tuberculosis, Walter flies him to a Montreal hospital, where Avik meets Albertine and is infatuated. A decade later, a grown Avik encounters Albertine again in London, where he's serving as a British combat pilot. Despite her relationship with Walter, she and Avik begin an affair.


Pretty Village, Pretty Flame
1996 · 2h 10m
In the opening stages of the Bosnian War, a small group of Serbian soldiers are trapped in a tunnel by a Muslim force.


Porzûs
1997 · 2h 1m · IT
In 1945, at the huts above Porzûs, a hundred partisans from the Garibaldi Brigade and the Gap massacred about twenty partisans from Osoppo. They were commanded by Geko, who later went around saying that the group was accused of treason and collusion with the fascists, all to avoid consequences. But at the end of the war, Storno, who had escaped the massacre, sentenced Geko and his men to life imprisonment in absentia.


Europa Europa
1990 · 1h 52m · FR
A Jewish boy separated from his family in the early days of WWII poses as a German orphan and is taken into the heart of the Nazi world as a 'war hero' and eventually becomes a Hitler Youth.


When Trumpets Fade
1998 · 1h 35m · US
In WWII Western Germany, Private David Manning reluctantly leaves behind a mortally wounded fellow soldier and searches for survivors from his platoon, only to learn from commanding officer Captain Pritchett that they have all been killed in action. Despite requesting a discharge on the grounds of mental disability, Manning is promoted to sergeant and assigned to lead a new platoon of young inductees.


Flight of the Intruder
1991 · 1h 55m · US
U.S. Navy pilot Lt. Jake Grafton and his bombardier buddy, Lt. Cmdr. Virgil Cole, are two soldiers embedded in the Vietnam War growing frustrated by the military's constraints on their missions. Despite the best efforts of their commanding officer, Cmdr. Frank Camparelli, to re-engage them, this disillusioned pair decide to take the war effort into their own hands with an explosive battle plan that could well get them court-martialed.


Ay, Carmela!
1990 · 1h 42m · IT
During the Spanish Civil War, a group of comics lightens the days of the Republican troops. Tired of life in the front lines, they make their way to Valencia, accidentally entering enemy land and falling prisoner.
The 1990s were the independent film decade, when Sundance and Miramax pushed low-budget American filmmaking into the mainstream. It's also when Hong Kong action, Japanese animation, and Iranian art cinema found large Western audiences.
War films range from combat spectacle to anti-war argument, and often try to be both at once. The genre is a reliable index of how a country understands its own history.